Magical Materials Thoughts

[Whitewings]

This idea is simple: to cast a spell, the caster needs a suitable gem. Each college requires its own sort of gem, and the energy cost must be paid out of the gem’s reserve (Enchantments are an exception, I’m not sure how to handle them). Each gem is like a naturally occurring single college manastone. Shape Earth can create new gems, but the gems charge up very slowly, about a point a year I’m thinking, and only charge once.

Logically, this suggests that most of mastering a spell is study, meditation, and related activities. What else might this imply or cause?

[KarlKost]

So, the gem is consumed then?

Maybe you could just use "exchanging CPs for money". I just don't know how many "energy" (fatigue/ER) is "worth 1 CP". I believe this conversion exists somewhere, I just don't remember where...

But then, you can just convert that amount into a $ amount. For TL 8, each 1 CP can be exchanged for $5000 if I'm not mistaken. Then you have the price tag of each spell.

[KarlKost]

Upon giving it some thought, since that "energy" from the stones is not reusable (it is therefore gone forever after the spell is cast), then what I can think of is to treat it as a "1 use only" advantage, which costs 1/5 of the original.

Now, each point of Fatigue costs 3 CP, which translates to $15.000 (for TL 8. You might want to adjust this for other TLs). But, since it is going to be a "1 use only", this cuts it down to $3.000

This means that you'll require a gem that is worth $3.000 for each point of Fatigue that the spell requires.

For Enchantment magic you can do the same formula, but given how the end result will be a permanent magic item, I would houserule out the 1/5 cost for "1 use only". That would mean a cost of the full $15.000 for each Fatigue point required and... And that means that Enchantments become quite expensive.

You might wanna adjust these numbers if you think they are too high thou.

[ajardoor]

Consider looking into the Gem Injection Ritual Magic system from Thaumatology.

I wrote a blog article about it here; https://tabletoprpg333.home.blog/202...-ritual-magic/

[Whitewings]

Originally Posted by KarlKost

So, the gem is consumed then?

Not exactly. You still have a gem, it's just not magically useful once it's drained.

[naloth]

I'm getting Stormlight vibes here :)

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Whitewings

Not exactly. You still have a gem, it's just not magically useful once it's drained.

Note that this removes the price of the gem as a gem from consideration. You don't loose that, so it has no effect on the price of a point of energy.

You'll need to set that yourself, but it's customarily 1 cp = 25 energy, so if 1 cp also generates $5000, it's a fairly straightforward $200 per energy point.

It's also worth noting that it makes no economic sense to cut or polish a stone, losing anything in the chips or dust, before you've drained it of energy, so no finished jewelry will have any energy left in it. The energy trade is all in raw (and therefore not very interesting looking) stones.

[Anaraxes]

From the description, I'd expect spells to be vanishingly rare. One gem is one FP per year, so even one mage would need a dozen or so to cast that one spell per year -- and they'll need to keep replacing them.

The cost to cast that one spell would be astronomical if use of those stones supposed to support the mage for an entire year while their mana battery recharges. Under these conditions, I'd actually expect there to be no professional mages. You can find a handymage or hobbyist that's rich enough to have some stones and knows how to work a spell, but they're spending 99% of their year doing some other work to support themselves, not making a living as a guild mage. That runs counter to the lifetime of dedicated study and meditation model for the typical mage.

DF-style magic is right out. Even if you could afford enough gems to sling 9-die fireballs every three seconds, there's not enough loot to make a return on the capital investment.

The sufficiently rich, including governments and individual nobles within that government, will have a hoard of stones for times of emergency, including war. They may or may not be willing to part with them for unimportant problems like peasant famines. (This is where you might get stories of wizards slinging fireballs, but they won't be individual independent spellslingers for hire. The manastone-owning organization will need a non-rational-economic motive to allow wizards burn up their stockpile: honor, patriotism, religious fervor, existential threats, etc.)

But I'm making a lot of assumptions that lead me to those conclusions. So, to turn those thoughts into questions:

How common do you expect the gems to be? Big, expensive, rare stones? Common little semi-precious ones? Does the value (and thus size) of the stone as a gem relate to the energy it can contain?

Do gems charge in the natural environment, or do they have to be enchanted first? Or can manastones only be created with Shape Earth?

Shape Earth doesn't normally create anything, which implies the shaping is altering the stone somehow that's necessary to allow it to store mana, which is to say that the original stone doesn't store mana. If so, that rules out natural pre-charged stones (or calls for something special in the world's backstory).

What happens to a stone if it's cut? Does it matter if its cut with Shape Earth instead of physically with saws or cleaving? Energy divides proportionally to the volume of the pieces? Energy stays in the biggest piece? Energy is freed from all the pieces to go percolate back into the world and maybe slowly sink into some other stone -- if they naturally recharge?

Note that these questions affect mining the stones as well as jewelry. If mana dissipates when the stone gets broken, there's there's not a natural supply of pre-charged stones; you can't mine them, because that will result in a lot of breakage. You'll be limited to stones that you can find as individual distinct crystals rather than big veins running through other rock, and mining will be slow as the miners will have to be careful not to damage any stones. (If the stone is common enough, then it's possible that mining simply wastes some significant fraction of the source. If the gemstones are already rare, then either the process has to be very efficient or the stones are even more scarce than the source.)

[Whitewings]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

How common do you expect the gems to be? Big, expensive, rare stones? Common little semi-precious ones? Does the value (and thus size) of the stone as a gem relate to the energy it can contain?

The capacity of a given gem is proportional to its mass. I'm not sure of the exact relationship.

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

Do gems charge in the natural environment, or do they have to be enchanted first? Or can manastones only be created with Shape Earth?

Natural stones come charged. Artificial ones, you have to wait.

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

Shape Earth doesn't normally create anything, which implies the shaping is altering the stone somehow that's necessary to allow it to store mana, which is to say that the original stone doesn't store mana. If so, that rules out natural pre-charged stones (or calls for something special in the world's backstory).

Shape Earth was an error. That should have been Earth to Stone, which I allow to create gemstones.

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

What happens to a stone if it's cut? Does it matter if its cut with Shape Earth instead of physically with saws or cleaving? Energy divides proportionally to the volume of the pieces? Energy stays in the biggest piece? Energy is freed from all the pieces to go percolate back into the world and maybe slowly sink into some other stone -- if they naturally recharge?

Energy is divided between the pieces, in proportion to the mass. Below a certain threshold, there's not enough gem to hold mana, so yes, conventional cutting does indeed result in a loss of energy capacity. A mage with Shape Earth and the Gemcutter, Jeweller or Gemologist skill can facet a gem without losing materials. Of course, this in turn requires another gem to be at least partly drained.

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

Note that these questions affect mining the stones as well as jewelry. If mana dissipates when the stone gets broken, there's there's not a natural supply of pre-charged stones; you can't mine them, because that will result in a lot of breakage. You'll be limited to stones that you can find as individual distinct crystals rather than big veins running through other rock, and mining will be slow as the miners will have to be careful not to damage any stones. (If the stone is common enough, then it's possible that mining simply wastes some significant fraction of the source. If the gemstones are already rare, then either the process has to be very efficient or the stones are even more scarce than the source.)

Miners will want to recover even small chips, because enough of them can be combined with Shape Earth and a suitable skill to make gems large enough to be useful.